New 'Big Books' showcase hundreds of workout options

RodaleBoth of Adam Campbell's latest books are crammed with step-by-step details of 619 exercises, as well as diet and nutrition advice. Adam Campbell knows a thing or two about exercise. Actually, he knows 619 — exercises that is — which he shares with readers of his two new books, “The Men’s Health Big Book of Exercises,” and “The Women’s Health Big Book of Exercises” (both $24.99, Rodale).

Crammed with step-by-step details on each exercise and diet and nutrition advice, the pages of both books are nearly identical until you get about three-quarters of the way in to the chapter on workout plans to reach your goals.

The women’s version feature “Skinny Jeans,” “Bikini Ready,” and “Prenatal” plans, while the men’s book boasts of ways to pack on size faster than ever in the “Scrawny to Brawny” workout and 12 weeks to a rock-solid six-pack by following the “Ultimate Fat-Loss” plan.

The diet strategy in Campbell’s latest books borrows from one he used in the “Men’s Health TNT Diet,” which he co-wrote in 2007 with low-carb diet researcher Dr. Jeff Volek. In that book, the authors advocated a more hard-core approach aimed at reducing the amount of glycogen in the bloodstream in order to trigger the body to burn fat for energy instead of carbs.

Campbell, a former commodities trader who went back to grad school to get a master’s in exercise physiology and go on to become fitness director for Men’s Health, says his interest in dieting was piqued by his father’s weight struggles.

“My father had always had a weight problem, he was kind of a yo-yo dieter for years and that got me really interested in weight loss research,” says Campbell, who worked in a weight-loss lab while pursuing his degree.

I spoke to Campbell earlier this month by phone from his publisher’s headquarters in Emmaus, Pa., about his TNT-friendlier diet and the exercises Americans should be doing, but aren’t.

Q. What’s the secret to your 4-week diet plan?

I gave the basic guidelines that we used in the TNT book. I’d almost call it “TNT-lite.” We basically went by the diet that Jeff gave his study participants when we did TNT. But, one of the things that I mention in The Big Book is that you can also go ahead and have sugar and milk and even bread, you just want to keep your carbohydrates below a certain level.

There are some really strong health benefits to eating a low-carbohydrate diet. There’s a variety of ways you can lose weight, but I think for someone who is plagued with insulin resistance, which many people are, a low-carb diet offers a bevy of health benefits.

Q. Why 4 weeks?

The idea is more of a psychological one. Look, try this for four weeks, you’re going to start to feel and look better. You’re not going to change your body overnight; it takes time. But I feel like if you can get people on the right path, if you can get kind of a momentum going, which I think is one thing that the low-carb diet really helps with because you start to see some fast weight loss, you can stick with it and hopefully use all of the workouts and exercises in the book to kind of propel you into the future.

Q.What’s the main downfall of American’s eating habits?

One of the things is that we sort of demonize lots of food. Whether it’s demonizing fat, which I don’t think has been a great idea for people, or demonizing carbs, which isn’t good either.

What we need to focus on is not overeating any of these foods. If you eat a prudent diet, a reasonable number of calories and make sure that you are eating some fat, then your carbs aren’t going to be too high.

Another problem is that most people don’t eat enough protein. Whenever people hear you say that, they think “high-protein diet.” It’s not that. We eat most of our protein after 6 p.m., so you’re getting all of your protein very late in the day. We know protein helps you feel full during the meal and helps provide your muscles with the nutrients they need to upgrade themselves. There is also a little bit of a metabolic effect with eating protein — it takes more calories to digest than other nutrients.

If you spread it out, if you eat more protein at breakfast, lunch, mid-day snack and then some at dinner, you’re going to have a better ability to lose weight because you’ll be less hungry throughout the day. It really does help with satiety.

Q.What exercises do Americans do too much of?

They focus too much on the wrong exercises for what their goals are. By that I mean if you go to a gym you’ll see lots of guys doing lots of arm curls. For most guys who want big arms, if they don’t have big arms it’s not for lack of curls. But, what they need to be concentrating on are exercises that work bigger muscle groups.

Same thing can be said for people who do crunches. I think people do too many crunches. Of course they work your abs, and you activate those six-pack muscles with crunches, but you’re also having to round your back over and over again when you do crunches. That’s not particularly good for your lower back. Whereas you can do planks.

You’re abs are really designed to resist rotation and flexion, the movement that you do when you do crunches. I don’t think people need to do any crunches to be honest.

They also need to focus on the exercises that better fit their goals and those are exercises that work lots of muscles. Many men and women focus a lot on upper body exercises, this is especially true for men. But over 50 percent of your muscles are in your lower body, and that’s probably being conservative.

Most people, if they want to lose weight, they need to focus on doing exercises that incorporate as many muscle groups as possible because they’re going to burn more calories.

They also need to focus on the back side of their body, not just their middle back and their lats, which they’ll get from chin-ups, and pull-ups and lat pull downs, but also the upper back, the traps, and the glutes and hamstrings — big muscles that a lot of people ignore.Q. What specific exercises aren’t we doing enough of?

I think people should do push ups. They’re better than bench presses, easier on your shoulders and actually improve shoulder stability.

People should do hip raises. They really activate your butt muscles, which kind of fall asleep and forget how to activate because most of us sit for long periods during the day, whether it’s in an office chair or behind the steering wheel of a car. Also planks and squats, a very natural human movement that works a lot of muscles.Q. Any advice you’d give to someone new to exercise who just picked up this book?

You don’t have to accomplish everything in one day. The idea is pick one workout or one plan and try it out. You don’t have to do three or four sets of each exercise. Just start doing something. Kind of try to form the habit of three days a week.

Stick with it for four or five weeks — that’s about the time people start to get in a habit of exercising — it takes about five weeks to ingrain exercise as a habit, which is based on a UK study. Pick something and do it consistently three or four days a week — I don’t care if it’s 10 minutes each time — to start out. Consistency is really the secret to achieving the body you want.

If you can set aside 10, 15 or 20 minutes and build on that you’re going to do a lot better than if you try to do it for an hour and you just don’t enjoy it. It’s about doing something that you can actually work into your life.

Another study I cite in my book is from the Metropolitan University in England. What they found is that people were 15 percent more productive on the days they worked out than the days they didn’t. Which is an amazing stat, because if you do the math over the course of an entire day what would normally take you 9 hours and 15 minutes would take you 8 hours.

Look, give it a shot for four or five weeks and see if you don’t look better and feel better.

Diane O’Donnell is the Health editor at the Advance. She may be reached at odonnell@siadvance.com.